Trevor Yeung's Vessel Poetics: Empty Aquariums and Dry Fountains as Metaphors for Emotional Life

Trevor Yeung's artistic practice centers on aquariums and fountains as vessels representing emotional states and interpersonal relationships. At the 2024 Venice Biennale, he presented empty tanks that glowed under LED lights, while M+ later restaged this presentation as "Courtyard of Detachments" with drained containers. His installations at Gasworks, Para Site, and Aranya Art Center featured soap sculptures of a tree trunk from London's Hampstead Heath, known historically for gay cruising, which gradually melt and deform. Yeung's work explores failure and transformation, as seen in his parched fountain installation "Pond of Never Enough (Under Construction)" (2025) at M+, where water stains resemble bodily fluids. The artist's restrained approach contrasts with the corporeal horror in works by Paul Thek and Tetsumi Kudo. Yeung's practice examines how broken systems—like empty aquariums and dry fountains—can be redefined rather than retired, suggesting new possibilities for identity and purpose. His work draws on literary references from Peter Schjeldahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, Brian Doyle, Chris Kraus, Jack Halberstam, and Virginia Woolf, while also invoking comparisons to Joseph Cornell's glass-fronted boxes. The artist's installations create archives of emotional experience through serial arrangements of weathered containers and volatile materials that change over time.